Plum Trees' Sorrow - Chapter 1

Chapter 1

After my mother passed away,

my father suddenly had a change of heart and remembered he had a daughter like me.

Once I reached marriageable age, he carefully selected several young masters, annotated their details one by one, and had me look them over.

Every one of them was upright in character and handsome in appearance.

Among them, two stood out the most.

One was the Second Young Master of the Cui Family, Cui Zhaoyu. The Cui family was a refined old clan of clean reputation. Since childhood, he had studied the Four Books and practiced the Six Arts. He was modest, gentle, and the most proper of men.

The other was the third son of the Xie family, Xie Jinyan. Born into a powerful noble house, he had been clever since childhood. Proud of his talent, he was rather aloof, but he was a man of noble character. Not long ago, he had nearly been beaten with the rod for speaking bluntly in remonstrance.

The moment I heard that, I put Xie Jinyan toward the bottom of the list.

Aloof?

Before my mother died of illness, our home had always been aloof-cold and cheerless.

She wanted to go see the Lantern Festival, but with one sentence, my father said there would be too many people and he did not want to squeeze through the crowds. He told my mother not to join in the commotion either.

My mother had clearly already dressed herself up, yet she only sighed, removed her makeup, and lay back down.

When my father traveled away on official business, he said he would bring my mother the finest local fabric when he returned.

In the end, that fabric arrived in the capital before my father did and became all the rage for a time.

Remembering my father’s words, my mother stubbornly refused to buy any.

But when my father returned, he came back empty-handed.

He had already forgotten what he had said before he left.

My mother was deeply disappointed.

Later, whenever my father told her to wait for him, my mother no longer believed him.

She did whatever she wanted to do, yet in the end, she was never quite as happy as she could have been.

After all, what she wanted was affection, not things.

One winter, heavy snow began to fall, filling the sky. My mother wanted to take a walk in the snow.

It was rare for her to be in such spirits, so she went to call my father.

My father said the snow was too heavy, that it was too cold to go out, and that it would not be worth it if she caught a chill and harmed her health.

My mother looked at the snow drifting and swirling outside, and in the end, she said nothing more.

I was the one who went out. I put on a cloak, pulled up my hood, walked through the snow, and brought back a branch of red plum blossoms blooming in vivid splendor.

My father had lied.

It is not cold when snow falls; it is cold when snow melts.

Going out to play on a snowy day was especially delightful. Everything was so clean. No matter what color existed between heaven and earth, it would be covered in white. Only the red plum blossoms struggled out from the snow, revealing one unyielding little face after another.

I gave the red plum blossoms to my mother.

Smiling, my mother placed them in a plum vase, then stared at them in a daze. The smile on her face was faint, carrying a sorrow as cold as winter air.

After that, my mother fell ill.

The illness came on violently, and soon she could no longer get out of bed.

Before she died, my father asked her if she had any last wishes.

Just then, snow began to drift down from the sky. My mother looked at the flurries falling all around, a line of tears slipping from the corner of her eye, and closed her eyes unwillingly.